Preston Carmichael must have found the book and the rings hidden inside, and taken them off to his prayer group. I had no idea what had happened next, but I was willing to bet it had involved some form of ritual magic.
Something that had drastically changed Preston’s personality – a sequestration, perhaps, or something more subtle. Had they conjured Our Lady of the Burning Spear? And, if so, why had it taken thirty years to come to our attention? It was hard to believe that something so powerful had eluded detection for so long. Nightingale admits that he took his eye off the ball, but flaming wings and a halo are pretty fucking hard to miss.
Not to mention the whole heart-reduction surgery.
‘Where’s Glossop?’ asked Danni.
‘It’s a town up by the moors to the east,’ said Bob. ‘It’s the start of the Snake Pass. Last town before Sheffield.’
‘Seawoll’s from there,’ I said.
We checked the rest of the box, but all the other books on the list were accounted for. One of them, a 1911 copy of the Second Principia, had a yellow bookmark sticking out the top. It turned out to be a Post-it Note. Somebody had written a couple of lines … I recognised the handwriting. Somebody who just couldn’t resist a bit of a gloat when she got ahead of me.
Obviously, Lesley had written, Nightingale don’t know everything.
9 Air Support
Glossop is in a different force area, so we bade farewell to DC Eileen Monkfish and the Greater Manchester Police and, pausing only to stock up on snacks, caught a local train from Manchester Piccadilly.
‘I have a car in Glossop,’ said Seawoll. ‘My dad’s going to drop it at the station for me.’
It was raining heavily as the train headed back out over the massive railway viaduct that feeds Manchester Piccadilly. Dirty grey clouds were low enough to drag their skirts across the tower-block-studded plain of the city. As the train peeled off to climb through the outer suburbs, me and Danni fired up our phones and got updated on the course of the investigation. Seawoll stayed strangely quiet and stared out the window.
At one point we shot across a valley on an extraordinarily high viaduct – one of those constructions that seems too ambitious to be made out of Victorian brick and wrought iron.
‘There’s a story,’ said Seawoll, still staring out the window, ‘that the mist came down once and the train stopped on a signal on this viaduct, and half the passengers alighted thinking it was the station and fell to their deaths.’
Glossop was the end of the branch line and a single-platform station – a low-slung, single-storey structure built of sandstone. Outside was a brick-surfaced car park, and waiting amongst a clutch of nearly new Peugeots, VWs and Toyotas was a battered Ford Escort that had, I estimated, last passed an MOT before the turn of the millennium. It was a sun-faded red, with a mismatched panel and white patches where dents had been beaten out.
‘This brings back memories,’ said Seawoll.
The doors were unlocked and the keys were hidden behind the sun visor. There were still drink bottles and food wrappers in the back seat’s footwell. Left over, Seawoll, said, from his leaving party. I’ve been in better-maintained pool cars and it creaked alarmingly when Seawoll levered his bulk into the driver’s seat. But when he turned the key in the ignition the engine started smoothly – that, at least, had been properly maintained.
Seawoll must have sensed my surprise.
‘I use it when I come up to see my dad,’ he said. ‘You need a car to get around up here.’
But not to get to the Volcrepe Mill – we could have walked it in fifteen minutes. Down a high street of sandstone terraces that crowded against the pavement. Small shop fronts with local brands, an Esso petrol station, a flat-roofed leisure centre that looked as if it was a prefab but was probably too modern. More terraces of the same sandy brick, and then we turned down a narrow lane which dipped down to what I knew from the map on my phone was the Glossop Brook.
On our left reared a derelict factory with boarded-up windows, and on the other side was a hoarding festooned with hard hat signs and hazard warnings. A building site – more housing, according to Seawoll, Glossop having gone from grimy industrial town to a ‘charming community’ set amongst the borders of the Peak District.
‘More lawyers, architects and financial advisors than you’d find in Maida Vale,’ he’d said as we passed multiple estate agents on the High Street.
Seawoll parked up next to the bridge, where a grey metal palisade gate blocked off the access road to the factory. Seawoll rattled the chain and padlock that held it shut and scowled.
‘We could climb over at the side,’ said Danni.
The ugly modern gate was fixed between the original sandstone posts – these were low and smooth enough to be climbed. You could even use the parapet of the stone bridge to start you off.
‘You can if you want to,’ said Seawoll, and he turned to me and held up the padlock. ‘Peter, come here and make yourself useful.’
I have a number of spells that can make short work of a lock, providing you never want to use it again. But when I gave the shackle a pull it proved to be open already.
‘Excellent,’ said Seawoll. ‘That makes it almost legal.’
I looked at Danni, who shrugged. Given that Seawoll held the exalted rank of detective chief inspector, we were both totally prepared to abdicate our responsibilities re: proper powers of entry procedure to him, as our senior officer. Lower rank, as I have often noticed, can have its privileges, too.
Beyond the gate was a cracked asphalt road that ran between the factory building and the river. The windows were all boarded up, but there was a door at ground-floor level that had been left hanging open. The rain, which had been fitful up until then, grew suddenly heavy, so rather than follow the road we ducked inside.
‘I used to come down here as a kid,’ said Seawoll. ‘Mind you, there was a lot more of it left in them days.’
We were in a room twenty metres long, where the first floor had obviously been allowed to collapse onto the ground. Piles of rubble and structural timbers were heaped in a ridge from one end to the other. The rain was pounding on the remains of the roof and pouring through a great gash that ran its length.
It smelt of mould, old stone and decay.
It was remarkably light on the vestigia – nothing more than a whiff of sulphur. I pointed this out to Danni.
‘Should there be more?’ she asked – raising her voice over the din the rain was making on the roof.
‘A working factory this old,’ I said. ‘Should be tons.’
‘Where to next?’ asked Danni.
Seawoll pointed to where an open doorway led to what appeared, from where we were, to be a more intact area.
‘Let’s try through there,’ he said.
‘It’s not here,’ said a voice behind us.
We turned to find a young white girl standing on one of the piles of rubble. She looked to be about ten or eleven, with a mop of sandy hair over a round freckled face and dark blue eyes. She was dressed for mischief in a pair of blue denim dungarees, a red and black chequered shirt and red Converse.
‘What’s not here?’ asked Seawoll – raising his voice to be heard above the rain banging on the remains of the roof.
‘What you’re looking for,’ said the girl, and I noticed that she didn’t need to raise her voice at all.
‘And what are we looking for?’ asked Seawoll.
‘Don’t you know?’ said the girl.
Then she skipped down the pile of rubble towards us. She did it without hesitation or looking down to see where she was putting her feet, the heels of her red Converse kicking up dust but never slipping.